Overload bracket operators [] to get and set

Question

I have the following class:

class risc { // singleton     protected:         static unsigned long registers[8];      public:         unsigned long operator [](int i)         {             return registers[i];         } }; 

as you can see I've implemented the square brackets operator for "getting".
Now I would like to implement it for setting, i.e.: risc[1] = 2.

How can it be done?

Answer 1

Try this:

class risc { // singleton protected:     static unsigned long registers[8];  public:     unsigned long operator [](int i) const    {return registers[i];}     unsigned long & operator [](int i) {return registers[i];} }; 

Answer 2

You need to return a reference from your operator[] so that the user of the class use it for setting the value. So the function signature would be unsigned long& operator [](int i).